September 3, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
The Council on Foundations, an association of grant makers, this week laid off 16 percent of its staff members due to the bad economy and a restructuring of its services.
The organization, in Arlington, Va., laid off 14 of its 85 employees, with most of the cuts affecting the communications and marketing department, said Monica Wroblewski, a spokeswoman for the group.
“Basically what is happening at the council is that we’ve undertaken a restructuring process, and with the current economic conditions expected to last at least through 2010, we need to be as efficient as possible, yet continue to deliver high-quality member services,” she said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle.
She said the organization is revamping some of its programs and that it needed people with different skills to fill possible new positions.
Despite the layoffs, she described the association as “financially sound” and said that it has not lost a lot of members since the economic crisis hit. The council has about 2,000 members.
Attendance at its meetings, however, has dropped.
For example, about 1,200 people attended its annual meeting in Atlanta in May. Last year, the council held a larger-than-usual gathering that combined all of its yearly meetings into one. More than 3,000 people attended that conference. In 2007, about 1,900 attended its annual meeting.
